


as if the world gave up

by preromantics



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Future, M/M, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-02
Updated: 2013-04-02
Packaged: 2017-12-07 06:22:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/745297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/preromantics/pseuds/preromantics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Semi-apocalyptic AU ft. copious amounts of feelings and killing. <i>"Fine," he said, squeezing his eyes shut even more. "Here's the plan: you get infected and I'm the one to do it. No one else, no exceptions. I don't care if you have to infect half the state before you can get to me, if I'm out tracking. You come to me and I'll do it."</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	as if the world gave up

**Author's Note:**

> April is National Poetry Month! I'm going to try and pick some of my favorite poems and use them as fic inspiration as a sort of challenge to myself this month, so this is the first of those. Anything short will just end up on [tumblr](http://peachbows.tumblr.com/), but anything longish will end up here!
> 
> Today's poem: [Rhapsody on a Windy Night](http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/21891) by TS Eliot.
> 
> Warnings: There are several character death mentions and allusions to a possible major character death and some briefly violent scenes! If you would like to know specifics, please scroll down to the notes at the end! Otherwise, also ft. abuse of parenthetical past-tense scenes within the narrative. And the vaguest universe ever.

Stiles cuts off the path as the trees start to thin out, away from the newly fallen leaves and into the sticky-wet ground covering under the shade of branches. His sneakers raise from each step with a squelch, enough that the were following Stiles will be able to track him, but not as easily as before, when each step over crisp maple leaves beckoned the whole of the forest. 

Allison caught the lead on this one, a few weeks ago, and the kill should rightfully be hers. She's busy with defense plans for the safe territory, though, so Stiles went in her place, abandoning a days-long track up the state that Allison didn't know about, only Lydia, and doubling back for this when he got the call.

It's an easy kill, the kind Stiles doesn't bother seeking out anymore. Scott stares at him a little too long sometimes, when they're behind safe boarders and Stiles is passing through to rest-up between tracking. Lydia stares too, when their paths cross long enough for them to both be resting in the same safe place for any length of time between hunts, but Stiles catches her eye and knows she understands in a way that Scott doesn't, with Allison by his side.

Stiles thoughts wander as he darts between trees, the blade strapped to his left shin cutting dull into his skin when he turns and his foot dips down into mud. It's a good reminder to pay more attention, but Stiles has done this so many times by now that he finds himself thinking of ways to make it more interesting, instead. He's less than a half day from the safe land, now that he's lead this were on for two nights, and it's not even mid-morning. He could be back in time for a good, warm dinner; Boyd's probably cooking, if he hasn't found anything on patrol. If not, it's Chris Argent, which means cake, and Stiles definitely wants to be around for dinner either way. 

After dinner he'll go back out, probably, find a longer lead, or try to go back north. He rolls the ring on his finger around with his other hand as he slows his walk, watches the band slip up and down his finger, too big for his hand. It always feels too heavy on his skin when he looks at it for too long, but it's getting easier, now.

"Okay," he says, startling a few birds from the nearest tree, "come out and play, you zombie werewolf freak."

 

-

 

Stiles wakes up after maybe three and a half straight hours of sleep and rolls out of bed wide-awake. The bed is made because he finally fell asleep on top of it, and there's only an indent on the far side where he'd curled up around a pillow. Looking at the bed for too long makes his head hurt, so he straightens out his shirt and bends until his back cracks and sets out to find Allison.

Everyone was long asleep when Stiles got back the night before, and he'd done his quarantine tests himself instead of waking anyone up. 

The sun is just coming up when he gets to the center of the compound where Allison has her planning room next to the big communal kitchen and Danny's tech area. Allison is already up; Stiles can see her through the window before he steps through the door.

"Anything new?" Stiles asks, once he's walked around so Allison is in front of him. She's leaning on outstretched arms over a table covered in maps with her eyebrows together, scrutinizing the layouts. Stiles slides a switchblade into his palm from his forearm and cuts one of the yellow pieces of yarn pinned to the nearest side, and that makes Allison look up. 

"Nice," she says, and throws a black push pin at him without blinking. "When did you get back?"

"A few hours ago." Stiles says. "Burned downstream," he adds, and leans over to push his pin into it's place. 

Allison stares at the pin for a moment before rolling her shoulders back and gesturing toward the farthest part of the table to Stiles. "Boyd says there's something weird over here," she says. "I was going to see if Lydia wanted it, but she left when she woke up and went south again."

"I'll go," Stiles says.

Allison narrows her eyes at him. "You should rest, I can do it tomorrow after all of this."

Stiles shrugs and slips his switchblade back up his arm. "It might rain tomorrow," he says, and Allison nods, spares him a small second glance and goes back to her maps.

Scott squeezes an arm around Stiles' neck when he leaves the room and presses a tupperware container of cake against his chest.

"Fuck, yes," Stiles says and ducks out from under Scott's arm to mess up his hair. "I'll be back in time for there to still be leftovers, so don't stuff your face."

 

-

 

Lydia is a proficient killer and an amazing tracker; she developed the strategy they all use to figure out where a newly infected wolf might wander, and the experimental cartograph algorithm for figuring out where a friendly might be hiding, packless and hiding from infection. She's gone for weeks sometimes, in the south, goes alone and comes back with nothing but an outstretched hand for pushpins and notebook of revisions a determined glint in her eye that Stiles sees right past.

They buried Erica the first week of the infection and Jackson went missing the next morning. Stiles avoids even smalltalk with Lydia, these days, sometimes so numb to it all that he's afraid he'll get angry again, yell at her for living in the past, looking for Jackson even though the obvious is right in front of her: he was infected when they buried Erica and left to die alone, so she wouldn't have to kill him. 

He knows what Lydia would say back, anyway, voice deadly calm: Jackson and Derek aren't the same person, Stiles. 

And Stiles doesn't need the reminder. 

 

-

 

Deaton is over the border with Stiles' dad, trying to figure out a cure. The population that survived and didn't flee overseas, who live in retaliative safety, they don't care about the cure. They don't care about finding non-infected werewolves and making sure they stay non-infected. For a while, humans stayed to fight, until the treaty was made. The Argents spearheaded it, their name holding all the weight needed, and the divide was made.

Kill any werewolf infected, get the non-infecteds to agree to a binding code of conduct, which made it so they would never be killed or hunted unless they harmed a human, and send them away.

Derek hated the agreement, Stiles knew. He helped enforce it, though, understood the value of having it and abiding by it, at least until everything was safe again. Stiles loved him for it, helped soothe the bitter out of the back of Derek's throat every time he had to make a choice he normally wouldn't have because of the agreement.

At one point, Stiles was going to go help Deaton. After Derek and after Allison shot him, he went to Deaton, ready to help, but Deaton stared at him with more knowledge in his gaze than Stiles was willing to open up to, and Deaton turned him away.

-

("We need to talk about it," Derek said, praying on Stiles' post-orgasm exhaustion.

"We don't," Stiles said, believing it, too. They didn't need to talk about it because it wasn't going to happen.

"If I'm infected --"

"You won't be," Stiles said, keeping his eyes deliberately closed. They had preventative measures in place and he and Lydia were barely a week away from finishing the borderline protection. Derek was warm and solid pressed up along Stiles' back and there was no reason he shouldn't be. 

"If I am," Derek said, reaching around to press his fingers over Stiles' lips, "we need to --"

Stiles bit the pad of Derek's index finger, hard, and shook his head. "Fine," he said, squeezing his eyes shut even more. "Here's the plan: you get infected and I'm the one to do it. No one else, no exceptions. I don't care if you have to infect half the state before you can get to me, if I'm out tracking. You come to me and I'll do it."

Derek's nose rubbed along the back of Stiles' neck, along his hairline. "I can't ask you to do that," he'd said, "I can't die knowing that the last time you see me alive is the first time you see me dead."

"That's a stupid fucking reason," Stiles had said back, around a laugh caught in his throat. 

Derek nuzzled in under Stiles' ear and laughed. "I thought it was sort of romantic."

Stiles rolled over and opened his eyes, catching his nose against Derek's, and Derek tipped his face down to get at Stiles' mouth before Stiles could say anything else .

"Promise me," Stiles said, later, with Derek buried deep inside him and shaking over him, "fucking promise me if it ever happens, you'll come to me. I'll be the one to do it."

"I promise," Derek had said, two words Stiles had never actually heard before, despite everything they'd been through, and Stiles -- 

Stiles believed him.)

 

-

 

Stiles catches three infected weres a few miles out from where Boyd first noticed something wrong. It's a gruesome scene, and one of them is tricky, tries to plead, has a nice little story about not being infected anymore, about being in control. 

It's Stiles only weakness, and he hates himself for it, the fact he wants to believe that the infection isn't an end-all, be-all sort of thing. 

"I'm not infected, I swear," she says, and even though Stiles can see the blood on her chin and the feral look in her eye, his voice shakes a little when he tells her to shift back into a human.

"I'm nervous," she says, "give me a minute, it's instinct, stop pointing your gun at me for a sec."

Stiles narrows his eyes at her, lowers his gun and makes a show of relaxing his posture. "Take your time, I won't shoot," he says, and he's lucky there's a part of him that wants her to be right badly enough that he doesn't even have to try to not register a lie in his heartbeat. She lunges at him with barely a pause after he's done speaking, though, and he shoots her, keeps shooting at her even as her body falls and he knows he should stop.

 

-

 

Lydia is sitting in quarantine filing her nails when Stiles steps in, and she gives him a bored once-over and makes a face. 

"You look like you could infect the whole state just by standing around," she says. "What did you do, take a crazy-person ritual bath in your kill?"

"Lyds," Danny says, from where he's pulling on latex gloves next to Melissa McCall, "easy."

Stiles rolls his eyes and shoots Danny a grin, undoes the tracking bracelet from around his wrist and tosses it to him. "There might be a data lapse, it got pretty soaked at one point."

Danny catches the bracelet with a fluid grace Stiles no longer tries not to be jealous of. "I'll see if I can patch it for the missing data," Danny says. "I've been working on something."

Stiles knows Danny knows what the data would show, where Stiles detoured to on his way back. Lydia is looking at them both over her nails, and Stiles knows she knows, too. Even Melissa probably knows, though she's good enough not to say anything from where she's getting a sample tube ready to test Stiles.

She does look at Stiles from over a needle and give him a motherly once over, a lot less frightening than Lydia's. "You should be more careful," she says. "I know it's highly unlikely, according to Deaton, but you're not immune like Lydia. You could still carry the infection back."

Sometimes Stiles isn't sure he cares, anymore -- a dangerous way of thinking that grows heavy in his gut every time he finds himself driving out to the first territory they all tried to hold. But he looks at Melissa while she draws his blood and sees the worry she holds for everyone in their safe territory, for Scott and Isaac and all the other wolves they all try to hard to keep safe and uninfected.

"I'll be more careful," Stiles says, if just to see the crease in her forehead smooth out. 

Lydia follows Danny out of quarantine with a last look at Stiles, a small and private smile on her face.

 

-

 

(Stiles leaned over the bed after he shrugged on his backpack and squinted to make out Derek's form in the dark. He aimed for Derek's forehead, but managed to kiss him on the bridge of his nose, instead, watched as he rolled into the touch and made a tired, half-awake noise.

"I've got to get a head start," Stiles said. "I'll be back as soon as I can."

"Mrgh," Derek said, but sat up all at once to pull Stiles toward him. His supply-laden backpack was heavy, so he wobbled and unbalanced and ended up half sitting in Derek's lap.

Derek tilted Stiles' head toward him, fingers splayed out wide over Stiles' jawline, and he licked deep and urgent into Stiles' mouth. 

"Shit," Stiles said, with a breathless laugh. "Come on, I really need to go."

"Stay," Derek said with a punctuating roll of his hips. "Leave in the morning."

"You're an awful alpha," Stiles said, crawling off the bed and out of Derek's immediate reach. "I'm trying to be responsible, here. Plus, Allison and Lydia would team up and kill me because they both wanted this kill. I had to give a powerpoint presentation to get it."

"Fine," Derek said, and Stiles could practically hear the eye roll. 

"Fine," Stiles echoed, but darted in for another lingering kiss before heading toward the door.

"Be careful," Derek said.

"Love you, too," Stiles said, sad he couldn't make out Derek's face through the dark of the room before he left.)

 

-

 

"You should go on the supply run with Danny and the others," Allison says, one day when everyone is inside the territory by chance, taking a rare chance to lounge around and fight over a movie. 

"You should," Scott agrees. "You should see your dad."

"Make sure he's eating right," Melissa says. 

"Maybe if I'm back in time," Stiles says, but he won't be, and everyone lets it go.

 

-

 

("Stay here," Stiles' dad said, only a second after Stiles stepped out of his embrace. "Now that --"

Stiles cut him off immediately, the new and constant prickling on his skin rising into a boil, "Now that what?" 

"You know," Stiles' dad said, with an uneasy look. "You don't have to do this anymore, he's not --"

"He is," Stiles said back, automatic, defensive, "and you think the entire recovery was just for Derek, dad? What about Scott, what about everyone?"

"We're safe up here, Stiles. Life is practically normal for everyone, and you could still help keep everyone safe with border operations. It's -- it's normal, here."

Stiles picked up his backpack, still warm from how long he'd had it at his back. "It's all human, you mean."

His dad had stared at him, looked at him like he looked at old pictures of Stiles' mom on the mantle in their old living room. "You're human, Stiles."

On his way back to the pack's current base of operations, Stiles killed so many weres he didn't remember to write down all of his burn points. He didn't even check that they were all infected. He didn't even check to see that they were all weres.

Allison met up with him at the halfway point, after he'd killed the were she was tracking, and she shot him in the shoulder with an arrow. "So we lost Derek," she'd yelled, as he yanked the arrow from out of muscle and skin, practically unfeeling, and she'd aimed another arrow at him at point-blank distance, "do you really think it would help anyone if we lost you, too?")

 

-

 

Sometimes Stiles does take time to stay around, when he feels wound-up so tight he can't focus on anything when he's out tracking and patrolling. Derek taught him how important it was to focus in the woods, took his time helping Stiles distinguish sounds and how to judge distances, even back when Stiles refused to believe Derek didn't have an ulterior motive to teaching him.

("I do have an ulterior motive, you dipshit," Derek had said, "it's called making sure you can survive and I don't have to save your ass every week."

"Oh, I'm sorry," Stiles had said back, "did you miss the gigantic whiteboard at the loft with the ass-saving tally marks, because I'm pretty sure I'm the one winning. Maybe I should be teaching you."

"Fine, we can swap," Derek said, completely serious, and then threw a pine cone at Stiles' head. "Pay attention.")

Stiles seeks out Scott as soon as he's been given Melissa's okay in quarantine. They eat almost half the junk food stockpile Danny brought back from the last supply trip in a day, and fall asleep on the couch at the end of a Die Hard marathon. 

They wake up sleeping half on top of each other with Allison asleep in the armchair near their feet and Scott looks serious when Stiles blinks him into view. 

"I'm sorry, you know," he says, apropos of nothing.

Stiles leans halfway up, and is about to is about to roll Scott off the couch -- they stopped apologizing for falling asleep together back in seventh grade -- but Scott leans into Stiles' neck and breathes, slow. 

"I can't smell him anymore, on you," Scott says. "And I'm sorry."

Stiles sinks back down, and jams his eyes shut. Scott makes a noise, a natural reaction to the twisted sort of emotional stink Stiles must explode with, and Stiles turns away from him. There's a lot of history that Stiles knows Scott is trying to mend, but even after a year it's too soon, will never not be too soon. 

He doesn't smell like Derek anymore. Stiles falls back asleep after Scott leaves the room with Allison and he wakes up promising himself he'll stay in territory for a week, find out what Danny's been developing and see if he can help Lydia fine-tune some of their tracking algorithms. 

 

-

 

A lot happens in a year: Stiles barely notices any of it. Sure, after the first two weeks he stops feeling so numb murdering possible non-infecteds stops being an option, and after two months his shoulder is healed enough from Allison's arrow wound that he can disarm Scott on a good day and Boyd on a really good day, and after six months everyone trusts him again, even Allison and possibly even Lydia, if she ever trusted him not to go crazy at all. 

Except there isn't much else about the year that Stiles remembers, and he starts paying attention again after that. Just because he's paying attention again doesn't mean he forgets Derek.

His tracking bracelet doesn't malfunction again for a while, though, and Danny gives him a small sort of nod each time he adds the data from each of Stiles' tracking kills to their log. 

"Guess I worked out the bugs this time," Danny says, and Stiles nods and looks over Danny's shoulder to the maps on the wall, all the clusters of half red-half black dots marking his kills. (Lydia's dots are bright green and Allison's are white. There are other colors spread out over the maps on the wall, just like there are non-distinct push-pins on Allison's tracking table, all the other humans who help them. Stiles and Lydia and Allison make up most of the map though, a deadly web of colored dots Stiles sometimes can't believe.)

"I guess," Stiles says. 

Danny looks happy, hands over Stiles' bracelet to his boyfriend, an uninfected were that Lydia dragged back with her half a year ago, where he's sitting at Danny's laptop helping categorize data. They kiss with a warm sort of casualness that makes Stiles want to leave the room and dry heave somewhere, but he sits down on Danny's desk chair and spins. 

It's been over a year, and Stiles is trying, now. 

"Danny, quit sucking face for a sec, I have a seriously important question: where's the chocolate I know you're hiding in this room?" 

 

-

 

Stiles catches Chris Argent looking at him strangely from time to time. Even after all this time, Stiles never knows what to make of him. He's efficient in coordinating hunters and humans in other states, and dedicated to containing the infection and rebuilding, and Stiles completely trusts Allison's judgment, so he isn't wary of Chris as a person.

There's something, still, that Stiles can't put his finger on. Something he wishes he could make time to puzzle out, or pay closer attention to. 

Paying too much attention to Chris makes his head hurt, though, even when Stiles it's trying to be better about trying, now. 

To Stiles, Chris is more of an Argent than Allison is, and it makes him think about Derek, and how Derek dealt with the Argent treaty for the containment of the infection and how he let it eat at him as Stiles watched. A nasty train of thought, because even remembering Derek at his worst makes Stiles want to do anything to have him back.

"Danny says someone got into his chocolate stash, so I have to make lemon cake instead," Chris says, waking Stiles up from an impromptu nap in the kitchen. 

"I don't know who," Stiles says, shrugging. 

"Of course," Chris says. "Why would you?"

Stiles stays in the kitchen and watches him bake, doesn't even bother trying to figure him out as a person, anymore. 

 

-

 

Lydia comes back from a week tracking in the south, pale as Stiles has ever seen her. He's just about to leave on a tip from Allison, but he turns right back into the territory as soon as he sees Lydia.

She sits down in quarantine and flicks a leaf off of her knee while Stiles tries to figure out what to ask her first, and then she starts to silently cry. 

Danny pauses with his gloves half on, but Lydia stands with tears still rolling down her cheeks and hands him her tracking bracelet and, Stiles sees, a dark blue pushpin. 

"Put it on the map," she says, her chin up. "Make sure it's in the right spot. You'll see."

Jackson. Stiles reaches out toward her but thinks better of it, walks over and sits silently next to her, instead, when she sits back down. 

"I knew it was him," she says, hours of silence later. "I thought -- well, never mind what I thought. I was wrong. It's almost been three years, did you know that?"

"Lyds," Stiles says. "I'm so sorry."

She turns to face him, wide-eyed. "You're not even a little bit glad you were proven right? I know you've wanted to say something for a long time, I just didn't want to hear it."

Stiles opens his arms and when she leans into him, he feels something click into place that he hasn't felt in a while. "Of course I'm not glad, Lydia. Jesus, I didn't want to be right."

"I think I knew for a while," Lydia says. "I just wanted to be able to prove myself wrong."

"You want to prove everyone wrong," Stiles says, and leans his chin on top of her head. 

Lydia laughs, a wet bubble against Stiles' chest. They stay like that for longer than Stiles can keep track of, with no one else in the quarantine room. 

"I should probably --" Stiles starts, quietly, but he can't bring himself to finish his thought, and he laughs instead. "Fuck, I can't even say it. He just -- he can't be gone, not really."

Lydia sits back up and looks at him with her lips thinned. Stiles leans back against his chair and can't meet her gaze. 

"I know," he says, "don't."

"I found something," Lydia says softly, which is not what Stiles expects at all and he sits up straight all at once. "With Jackson's body. He was buried, fairly recently, in the traditional way. Like Erica was. And there was this."

Stiles watches like he's watching from another part of the room entirely as Lydia unfolds something from the hem of her skirt. It's a ring Stiles would recognize anywhere, even off of Derek's finger. 

When they buried Erica, years ago, Derek buried a ring with her, explained when Lydia asked that, traditionally, pack members should have something from their alpha with them in death. 

"It could have been from --" Lydia starts, but Stiles takes the ring from her and folds his fingers around it. 

"He didn't know," Stiles says. "We talked about it, once. He told me he didn't know if Jackson had died, and he had no reason to lie. And he had the ring the day he -- the last time I saw him."

"Still," Lydia says. 

Stiles leans into the hand she puts on his shoulder. "Still," he says. 

 

-

 

("There are things I have to do," Derek said, once. "You wouldn't understand."

"So teach me to," Stiles had said, drawing himself up to full height in front of Derek. "I'm tired of this. I trust you, Derek, isn't that enough?"

"It's not enough," Derek said.

Stiles was ready to fight that, ready to list all the reasons it should be, all the reasons Derek should trust him, after everything, but before he could get a single word out, Derek crowded him backwards against the jeep and kissed him. Kissed him like crawling inside him wouldn't even be enough, and Stiles clutched at his shoulders and laughed into Derek's mouth and he thought maybe he understood a little more, already.

"There might be things I can't tell you, even if I want to," Derek said. "But if you trust me --"

"I do," Stiles said, automatic.

Derek leaned in, rested his forehead against Stiles'. "I do, too," he said. 

"Apparently," Stiles said back, giddy with Derek's hands on him, with the trust, with everything.

"Don't make me regret it," Derek said, leaning back and ruining the teasing tone he'd attempted with an expression that couldn't shake it's seriousness.

Stiles leaned all his weight forward and kissed him, once, twice, and again because he could, until Derek reached up to tilt Stiles' jaw with his hand and kiss him deeply.

"Never," Stiles said, breathless, and he meant it.)

 

-

 

It takes two months after Lydia gives him the ring -- Stiles doesn't tell any of the others, though he's sure at the very least Allison knows what he's doing, for fear they'll list all the reasons why he shouldn't get his hopes up -- but two months isn't that long, really, in the end. Stiles doesn't spend the whole time looking for Derek, not only because he couldn't just give up on his duty to what the pack is trying to achieve, but because therein lies madness. Maybe those first few weeks after Derek was gone, Stiles could have devoted himself fully to searching, but not now.

Stiles' jeans are muddy on the bottom six inches by the time he pauses to look down at him. He's bored with the chase with his kill behind him, wishing Allison didn't hand such an easy kill off to him. 

"I can't believe you called me a zombie werewolf freak. I was never really into the pet name thing, but I can't believe your standards have dropped so low. No terrible puns?"

Stiles almost drops the ring he's been fiddling with on his finger as he spins around. For a moment he thinks he's hallucinating, but he's never been able to remember one of Derek's real grins with any clarity, even back when he got to see them with semi-frequency. 

"Fuck," Stiles says. "Derek." 

"Yeah," Derek says. He's only a few few away, standing between two trees, and Stiles shakes his head, just to be sure. 

"Derek," Stiles repeats, and even he's unsure if he sounds angry or exhausted or ecstatic, but Derek is right in front of him before he can blink, a hand on Stiles' chin so he can look directly at him.

"I'm sorry," he says, something desperate in the seriousness of his voice. "You trust me, right?"

"Derek," Stiles says, again, reduced to just that. He wasn't even trying to track Derek, today. He was miles and miles away just yesterday trying to follow Lydia's best guess path and now -- "Fuck."

"I know," Derek says, leaning in fully all at once and pressing his whole face into the crook of Stiles' neck.

Stiles reaches up and grips the back of Derek's neck, keeps him pressed against him, real and solid. "I knew you weren't -- I knew. I had to believe you wouldn't break the only promise you ever made to me."

Derek laughs a little into his neck, sounding startled. "That just sounds like you were upset you didn't get to kill me," he says, muffled against Stiles' skin. 

Stiles leans back and looks at him. "No jokes, not right now," he says.

"No jokes," Derek agrees. "Maybe another promise, though."

"Promise you'll never fucking disappear for over a year again," Stiles says.

Derek nods. "I promise," Derek says, and Stiles believes him.

**Author's Note:**

> If you're scrolling down for warnings:
> 
> Character death mentions: Erica and Jackson, in the past. Character death allusions: Derek, but he's not actually dead!  
> Violence warnings: pretty frequent off-screen mentions of killing, some described death, mention of Stiles killing without motive in emotional distress, arrow wound, a scene talking about blood drawing, and a seriously generally bland view toward killing.
> 
> Um, all typed out that sounds pretty awful! It is probably not that awful. 
> 
> -
> 
> End notes that aren't warnings: the beginning/end scenes were supposed to be the same scene circled back around. Whoo, intentional and unmasterful time and tense jumps! I don't have plans to write any more of this weirdass non-verse, but I imagine Derek was off unraveling the Argent treaty and Chris and Allison were actually in on it because even though they used their name to smooth things over, Chris' viewpoints have changed and Allison's are obviously different. /3am


End file.
